I'd say that's a little aggressive there with the new guy, why the tone? I'd also say that a $20 corkage at a "nice" restaurant is pretty standard - it's much higher in Houston/Dallas. They want you, of course, to purchase the wine they provide. That's how they make money. To me, for providing you with stemware, serving your bottle, and forgoing the revenue - $20 doesn't sound like that much.

IMO paying a corkage is generally only worth it if you are going to bring in a higher priced bottle of wine ($40+). However, strictly from an economic perspective (given 2x+ markups) as soon as you go past a $20/btl - it's cheaper to pay corkage.

To answer your question directly, there aren't many "nice" restaurants in town that have a corkage fee at all (e.g. Republic, Veritas, Christopher's, Porter's, Poppy, etc.). This is primarily for two reasons. First, almost all of our nice restaurants have a full bar. As soon as an establishment serves hard liquor, it is against the law for them to allow patrons to bring in alcohol. Second, most restaurants want you buying their alcohol - allowing corkage substantially cuts into their profits so most don't even if they can.

I will actually choose Madden's on occasion if we have a nice bottle of wine and don't want to cook because of their corkage fee policy. I appreciate the restaurant's willingness to allow that option.

Paolo's no longer can allow you to bring your own wine as they serve hard liquor now.

40 Tempura does allow you to bring your own wine. I believe their corkage fee is $15, which is reasonable to me. It lets me bring, say, a $50 bottle of wine and drink it for $65 total rather than drinking a $50 bottle of wine and paying $150 for it (like you would at, say, Christopher's, which has some of the highest markup in this town).

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